Search results

The purpose of the paper is to show how the sustainability of urban settlements can be improved by treating as a variable the design of property rights: to realty, corporations, and currencies, and the communication and control architecture of communities.

System science shows how the resulting increases in the richness and variety of communication and control channels improve the governance of urban precincts. The new variables also provide a way to integrate the design of the built environment into the design of its governance architecture. The scope of orthodox economic analysis is extended to include the value of assets and liabilities to provide additional feedback signals. This more holistic economic framework increases the richness of the “semiotic” channel of social communication and control that complements those based on senses, words and prices.

The analysis reveals self‐reinforcing feed‐forward and feedback channels between the use and maintenance of the built environment and its governance architecture not available in less holistic design frameworks.

The paper identifies the need for urban planners to extend their discipline to become governance architects and how the knowledge of system scientists can be applied to improve the design of capitalism.

A new design paradigm is identified that allows improvements to be introduced in the ability of towns or suburbs, to become self‐financing, self‐governing political units. The paradigm identifies how capitalism can be designed to become more efficient, equitable, responsive, and democratic.

Scant attention has been given to the role of enterprise architecture (EA) in relationship to risk management in information system development projects. Even less attention has been given to the inter‐organizational setting. The aim of this paper is to better understand this relationship.

The relationship between EA and project failure/success is investigated by – through a workshop – creating a retrospective view on the use of architectures in large and complex ICT‐projects.

Failure factors can be grouped in organization network, people, process, product and technology categories. The findings show that a disappointingly limited number of public sector development projects make sufficient use of architecture as a risk management instrument. Architectures should be considered both as a risk‐mitigating instrument and as an organizational shaping routine to reduce project failure and manage risk in organization networks.

A single workshop with a limited number of participants was conducted. The findings need further refinement and generalization based on more empirical research investigating the relationship between architecture and project failure.

Architecture should give explicit consideration to risk management and help to draw attention to this. Governance mechanisms need be defined to ensure that the organizations' members become aware of both architecture and risk management. Risk management and EA have similarities, as they are both an instrument and an organizational shaping routine.

Governments collaborate more and more in organizational networks and for that reason often multiple organizations are involved in information system project developments. Enterprise architecture as a risk mitigation instrument has not, to date, been given attention.

Because of the attention increasingly being focused on digital transformation, interest in business models of platform-enabled ecosystems is rising rapidly. Although there are different theoretical views on the role of ecosystems, a synthesis of research, with a focus on governance and orchestration in dynamic, multi-industry eco-systems, is lacking.

A systematic literature review was conducted by following a rigorous search protocol in the scholarly databases covering both journal articles and conference papers These papers were subsequently filtered, and finally, 48 relevant papers were selected for analysis.

The review identifies five key aspects of platform governance design that need close consideration: the meta-organisation or ecosystem design, coordination mechanisms, mechanisms for value co-creation, value appropriation mechanisms and architectural principles. To achieve balance among a set of competing demands, platform leaders need to devote adequate attention to these aspects.

Based on a literature review, the authors provide an overview of underlying theoretical views, research methods and key trends to develop a sound theoretical grounding for research on platform governance design. The paper also suggests research gaps in the existing literature and sets directions for researchers to strengthen the understanding of effective platform governance design. The paper also provides valuable information to managers in developing or leading a successful platform ecosystem.

The paper uses existing literature published in this topic and original in nature.

The purpose of this paper is to apply experimentalist framework to understand self-optimizing efforts within German manufacturing multinationals. Benefits and characteristic obstacles to diffusion are discussed. Mechanisms for combatting obstacles are outlined.

Qualitative case studies, interview-based research, processual and reflexive action theory are applied to the governance of manufacturing-based multinational enterprises.

Uncertainty is an ineradicable element in multinational companies (MNC) FDI operations. Self-optimizing systems, many with an experimentalist character, are a pervasive form of response to this uncertainty. Obstacles to the diffusion and effective operation of self-optimization are chronic and, indeed, endogenously generated. But as a result, so are superordinate efforts to undercut the continuous emergence of obstacles. MNC development is, thus, characterized by continuous self-recomposition.

Implication is that managers and management theorists should focus as much on the management of dynamic process and learning that results in the recomposition of institutional rules as they do on the constraining and enabling effects of those rules.

Superordinate mechanisms for the disruption of incipient insulation and exclusion are crucial for the implementation of successful experimentalist (learning) systems.

Transparency, stakeholder involvement in MNC governance processes has positive implications for learning, innovation and competitiveness.

This paper presents the application of experimentalist learning theory to MNC global governance.

Government organizations often store large amounts of data and need to choose effective data governance service to achieve digital government. This paper aims to propose a novel multi-attribute group decision-making (MAGDM) method with multigranular uncertain linguistic variables for the selection of data governance service provider.

This paper presents a MAGDM method based on multigranular uncertain linguistic variables and minimum adjustment consensus. First, a novel transformation function is proposed to unify the multigranular uncertain linguistic variables. Then, the weights of the criteria are determined by building a linear programming model with positive and negative ideal solutions. To obtain the consensus opinion, a minimum adjustment consensus model with multigranular uncertain linguistic variables is established. Furthermore, the consensus opinion is aggregated to obtain the best data governance service provider. Finally, the proposed method is demonstrated by the application of the selection of data governance service provider.

The proposed consensus model with minimum adjustments could facilitate the consensus building and obtain a higher group consensus, while traditional consensus methods often need multiple rounds of modifications. Due to different backgrounds and professional fields, decision-makers (DMs) often provide multigranular uncertain linguistic variables. The proposed transformation function based on the positive ideal solution could help DMs understand each other and facilitate the interactions among DMs.

The minimum adjustment consensus-based MAGDM method with multigranular uncertain linguistic variables is proposed to achieve the group consensus. The application of the proposed method in the selection of data governance service provider is also investigated.

This study examined the governance and implementation of public–private partnership (PPP) based on the management contract model in the water sector in rural Ghana.

It employed in-depth interviews with key management officials and focus-group discussions among residents in selected water-stressed communities in the beneficiary District Assemblies. Thematic analysis was employed for the analyses.

The governance of the PPP project was characterized by a well-structured institutional arrangement and effective governance mechanisms. The PPP project has increased residents' access to potable and affordable water and facilitated local economic and social development in its catchment areas. However, insufficient funding, political interference, limited infrastructural capacity and pollution are threatening its success.

The study contributes to the literature on effective governance and performance of rural-based PPP water supply projects for the achievement of the sustainable development goals goal six on access to affordable and quality water.

Success in the information systems (IS) project domain is elusive despite extensive research on the topic. Governance is seen as the greatest contributor to project success. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and report on the current perceptions and implementation of information technology (IT) governance within IS portfolio management to develop a sub-framework to guide practitioners. This sub-framework forms part of a grand IS project, programme and portfolio governance framework of which this study forms a contributing part.

The researchers followed a mixed-methods approach through utilising Q-methodology and inverted factor analysis.

The results provided a sub-framework recommending specific IT governance practices to be applied to IS portfolios. The recommendations are categorised as activities to be maintained, enhanced and/or implemented.

The research only had participants from South African organisations and as such cannot be reliably extrapolated to other regions.

The resultant sub-framework provides stakeholders and practitioners involved in IS portfolios an opportunity to examine their own approaches and be confronted with possibilities in their portfolio management activities. Further research to be conducted includes creating a grand framework to address the linkages between portfolio, programme and project management as it relates to IT governance on various strategic levels.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the relationship between the existence of asset specificity and the architecture of the hybrid governance structures adopted by horticultural smallholders from the Brazilian region of Serra Fluminense.

This paper uses a negative binomial regression model to analyze 567 transactions carried out by horticultural smallholders from the Brazilian region of Serra Fluminense. Starting from the insights of Oliver Williamson’s transaction cost economics, an indicator is constructed with the goal to capture the degree of intensity of coordination from the adoption of diverse bundles of coordination mechanisms in a governance structure.

The results show that higher levels of human and physical asset specificity affect the intensity of coordination of the transactions in the sample, leading to the adoption of hybrid forms with more complex bundles of coordination mechanisms.

This paper adds to a growing literature that studies the architecture of complex governance structures. However, its empirical conclusions are exploratory.

The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, quantitative empirical studies that analyze the diversity of hybrid forms in the same industry are relatively rare. This contribution also presents a theoretical discussion that might inform scholars dealing with similar research challenges.

The purpose of this study is to discuss corporate governance in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Lesotho to influence policy debates.

This is a desktop study that used the qualitative research approach. For this research, the case study method has been adopted. In terms of orientation, this is descriptive research. Data were collected from three-tiered sources: independent publications (e.g. World Bank); government publications; and newspaper articles. Data analysis was in the form of document analysis.

The study concluded that there are instances of poor and/or bad governance in SOEs in Lesotho. Egregious examples include transgressing against the Public Financial Management Act (2011) and the failure to submit Audited Financial Results.

The findings are limited to a specific case. Nonetheless, there are general lessons that can be drawn for African countries from the case study. A key general lesson is the imperative need to reconfigure the legal-institutional architecture of SOEs so that they create public value.

Other than cataloguing instances of poor and/or bad governance in SOEs in Lesotho, the paper goes further and accordingly makes policy recommendations to enhance corporate governance in SOEs in Lesotho.

There is no academic study on corporate governance in SOEs in Lesotho; therefore, there is a gap in the literature. Hence, the study makes an original contribution to the literature.